Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Ex wall street CEOs still living large

Ex-Wall Street CEOs still living large

Five years after Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy plunged the global economy into chaos, over 11 million Americans remain unemployed — including nearly all Wall Street CEOs at the center of the crisis.  But none of the executives have faced any criminal charges nor appear to be suffering for their contributions to the worst recession since the Great Depression. Quite the contrary. The former CEOs of Wall Street’s biggest firms circa 2008 are “living in quiet luxury,” according to a report this week by The Center for Public Integrity.  The 5 former CEOs examined by the Center – Dick Fuld (Lehman Brothers) Jimmy Cayne (Bear Stearns), Stanley O’Neal (Merrill Lynch), Chuck Prince (Citigroup) and Ken Lewis (Bank of America) -- took home nearly $1.5 billion in total compensation from 2000 to 2008.

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How to be the richest person in Canada

How to be the richest person in Canada

We can learn something about getting rich based on these survey results

By Golden Girl Finance | GoldenGirlFinance.com – Mon, 16 Sep, 2013 7:00 AM EDT
The most recent results from Statistics Canada’s 2011 National Household Survey are in. Overall, Canadian wallets aren’t doing too shabby- 95 percent of Canadians earned some form of income in 2010 and 70 percent earned it from busting their butts at work.
Oh! Canada, you make us proud. Canadians reeled in $1.1 trillion into their household bankbooks for the year from employment income, government transfers, investment income and private retirement income sources.
The report segments income earners into ten percentiles. The median income of Canadians is reported at $27,800 (consider that some of the respondents were millennials with part-time jobs), but one in ten of us earned more than $80,400 in that year. The top 5 percent earned at least $102,300. The top 1 percent earned at least $191,100, but averaged $381,300.
If you’repart of the ninty-nine percentwho didn’t quite make that mark, don’t worry- the report also outlines some characteristics of those who did so we can follow in their footsteps.With these handy dandy breadcrumb clues, we should be able to get up to that top percentile by the time the next Census rolls around, which is scheduled for 2016. Cue Rocky IV training montage music now.

Turn yourself into Miss Moneybags

1) Go to school and get educated
The best investment a gal can make is in herself. Of the top 1 percentile of income earners, 67.1 percent had earned a university degree compared with just 20.9 percent of the rest of the respondents- and 87.4 percent of the top 1 percent earned a post-secondary qualification of some kind.
2) Study business, health, or engineering
These three fields of study made up 55.1 percent of the fields studied by the top 1 percent. They also made up high proportions of the fields studied by other high-income earners, usually accounting for about half.
3) Study dental, medical, or veterinary residency
A whopping 1 in 4 people studying in one of these three fields landed in the top 1 percent of income earners. With those kinds of odds, we’re willing to bet the other three aren’t doing too badly either.
4) Work in a management occupation
The top 1 percent of income earners also worked in a narrow range of occupational fields. In fact, 87.7 percent worked in one of the following five occupations: management; health; business, finance and administration; education, law and social, community and government; and natural and applied sciences and related fields. However, management professionals made up the largest chunk of this percentile, accounting for 38.8 percent of the highest-income earners.
5) Have investment income
Although investment income was reported by just a third of Canadians, more than two-thirds of the investment income reported came from the top 20 percent of income earners. Of the top 10 percent of income earners, half reported receiving investment income, but that income accounted for 56.7 percent of all investment income reported.
Women are cashing in
The report also indicates that women made up 20.5 percent of the top 1 percentile, 25.6 percent of the top 5 percentile, and 30.9 percent of the top 10 percentile. Hopefully, this leaves you feeling inspired to set up a 3-year, 5-year, or 10-year plan that will lead you to your dreams. Oh! Canada, the future is oh-so-bright!
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Speaking for those around me

I speak for the millions of Nigerians who are just like me
The gazzillions of people just trying to be free
Tossed and turned on vast and dare I say tumultuous seas
Forgotten by all even a country
That doesn't care if we live
Or even breathe
I speak for those who cos of challenges are sometimes robbed of their peace
I speak for them and I speak for me
I speak standing before a God,
The God who sired and birthed me
I stand before him knowing I do not quite understand
How and why of the way he thinks
And the words his ways are not my ways churns on the inside of me
I am a man searching for an absolution in a desert, without a river or even a stream
Searching for relief from the conflicting emptiness that threatens to consume me
How and why
Are two questions that rarely leave my lips
Cos I am a man who I would like to think
Thinks deeply
I speak for the lost who struggle to be all they can be
To find or create their own identity
Even as they journey along a path that seems shrouded in mist
I speak for the souls that are troubled and worried by what the future could bring
The skies they say is the limit, so take a breath and breathe
Carefully
With faith it is said you can achieve anything
Faith am sorry to say sometimes ebbs out of me
Like now... As I search for a path that is unclear to me
All I can ask is God, you have to help me
Help me to make sense of all this
And help me to fly
Like the giant I was destined to be
Cos if you turn your back on me
You have resigned me to a land filled with nothing but emptiness
I speak these words cos I hope you will hear me
And bring us all out of the darkness that has become our reality.
Freedom is all I want to see
I pray you will speedily help me to find it



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It hurts no more

I took a look at your picture again
Waiting to see if my heart would weep again
But strangely all I felt was nothing
There was nothing to be gained
By being sad...
I felt free for the first time in days
That picture didn't scald like in did in those times
Or those days
All I felt was relief... Freedom...
From the coldness of them dark and lonely days
I realize things have to be this way
Now happiness is no longer a phone call away
Its inside
A roaring fire whose heat cannot be kept at bay
Thank you Lord for making things this way
I am happy that you made me this way



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A dying world

Peaches and whipped cream
In another part of my brain I hear peace and tranquility
Yeah right... A supposedly quiet languid scene
But all I see is a bag full of lies vaquely seen
My friend told me this world is ending
I bucked at the thought initially and then peace came
Terrible things are happening
No one is who they say they are
Goodness, purity are illusions that faded like lightening
Lies are sold now for less than a farthing
Who are we kidding?
A dozen of I do's on several hundred million altars
Turn to I don't in a matter of months
What is happening?
Natural disasters, thieving, everyone is cheating
Even the little ones who are supposed to be endearing
Become more than a little creepy
Its then the coldness creeps in
There are times I feel I wasn't made for this world I was born in
I am a hopeless romantic, a bit of an idealist
And who sadly exists in a realm
Which my head tells me is not real
And my heart hungers and searches for with zeal
There are those that have walked the halls of these world alone
I don't want to be like them
But what choice is there in order to avoid being broken
By the lies, the filth, the emptiness
This world is stuffed with and torn open
Maybe these are words best left unspoken
All I know is....
Heaven is where I hope all joy will awaken
And forever will no longer be a thing to dread
Or leave unspoken


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Thursday, September 5, 2013

Eye gouging

Police in China suspect woman who gouged out boy's eyes was aunt who later killed herself

By Gillian Wong, The Associated Press | The Canadian Press – 3 hours ago
BEIJING, China - Chinese authorities say they suspect that the woman who gouged out a 6-year-old boy's eyes was his aunt who later killed herself, adding a surprising twist to a gruesome case with conflicting details.
The attack on the boy horrified the Chinese public and added to outrage over violence against children in the wake of a scandal earlier in the year involving teachers sexually abusing young girls. This time, heart-wrenching images and footage of the wailing child in hospital, his eyes bandaged and parents distraught, have circulated on the Internet as news commentaries slammed the brutality of the attack.
"Mama, why is the sky still so dark?" the child has been quoted as saying while recovering in hospital, his parents unable to bring themselves to tell him about his condition.
On Wednesday, police in the city of Linfen in northern Shanxi province confirmed an official Xinhua News Agency report that the boy's aunt Zhang Huiying had been identified as a suspect because his blood was found on her clothes. Six days after the boy was attacked, Zhang killed herself by jumping into a well.
In an interview with the Beijing News published Thursday, Zhang's husband described how the woman's mental state unraveled in her final days.
Xinhua did not cite a possible motive for the aunt to attack the boy.
Initial reports said the boy, Guo Bin, whose also goes by the nickname Bin Bin, had been playing outside his home on the evening of Aug. 24 when he was lured by an unidentified woman into a field where she used a tool to gouge out his eyes. Family members found the boy late at night in a remote area, his face covered in blood, eyelids swollen.
The police finding seemed to conflict with the family's earlier comments on the boy's assailant, which cited him as saying that the woman spoke with an accent from outside the area and had hair that was dyed blonde.
Bin Bin's mother said in a phone interview that the boy was disoriented after the traumatizing attack.
"It is easy to understand that he wasn't clear about the situation," Wang Wenli told The Associated Press. "He said her accent was from another region, but he later amended that. He then said it was a local accent, but he did not say that it was his aunt."
She declined to talk about the police evidence against her sister-in-law, saying: "The police did not tell us anything. I do not know." She also said reports of a dispute between the families were false.
Bin Bin was recovering steadily after a week of treatment, his mother said, while help has poured in from the Chinese public and elsewhere in the form of donations and gifts.
State broadcaster CCTV aired fresh footage of the boy in hospital being guided by a doctor to feel his way around a room with his hands. He's seen singing a children's song to a doctor and playing with a plush toy elephant, teddy bear and other toys.
"He talks to me, and he plays with toys that people have sent him," Wang said. "He still doesn't know that he likely will be blind the rest of his life."
One of the case investigators reached by phone, a police officer in Fenxi county surnamed Liu, referred only to the Xinhua report and refused to answer further questions, saying he was not authorized to speak to the media. Calls to the city and county's police bureaus' propaganda departments rang unanswered.
Wang's brother Wang Wenjun, one of the boy's uncles, also said by phone that Zhang, the aunt, might have been mentally ill, saying it was unclear why she committed suicide.
Speaking to the Beijing News, Zhang's husband Guo Zhicheng said his wife had been a timid person and that he "simply could not understand" how she could be the suspected assailant.
Guo described how a full day of police questioning left his wife frazzled, with her saying she was having difficulty breathing and heard an elderly woman's voice in her head urging her to leave the house.
On the morning of Aug. 30, after telling her husband she'd been taken outside of the house by "that old lady" until 3 a.m., she jumped in the well in the courtyard at home, Guo was quoted as saying.
___
Associated Press researchers Zhao Liang in Beijing and Fu Ting in Shanghai contributed to this report.




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Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Movies to adore

  • Benedict Cumberbatch could nab a Best Actor Oscar nod for "The Fifth Estate." (TIFF, DreamWorks, Frank Connor)
    The Toronto International Film Festival is widely regarded as the unofficial kickoff to Oscar season. TIFF is where the major studios roll out their big prestige projects and character pieces in order to build buzz and critical chatter for the holidays.
    As an event that attracts both the film industry and the general public, TIFF has been an excellent bellwether for future award season success, and the 2013 edition of the festival is no different. Here are our Oscar predictions for films, filmmakers, and actors appearing at TIFF 2013.
    Best Picture
    "12 Years A Slave" is getting some early awards season buzz. (Fox Searchlight Pictures)
    Let’s get the big one out of the way right off the bat: The Best Picture category at the Oscars is the be-all-and-end-all of movie awards. Numerous TIFF movies have won the coveted award in the past (films like “American Beauty,” “Slumdog Millionaire,” and “The King's Speech”), so there’s already a strong Toronto-Oscar correlation.
    Many factors determine the Best Picture nominees, but it mostly boils down to strength of concept, cast, execution,
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  • George A. Romero poses with zombie fans at the 2009 Midnight Madness screening of "Survival of the Dead." (Malcolm Taylor/Getty Images)
    Do you like genre movies?
    You know, good stuff like horror, science fiction, western, crime, and kung fu flicks – basically, the complete opposite of what you might expect to find at a major international film festival. You do? Great! So then you must know about Midnight Madness, the Toronto International Film Festival's long-running genre film programme, right?
    Away from the gala premieres and swanky after parties, tucked away in the middle of a university campus, is the Ryerson Theatre, current home to Midnight Madness and Toronto’s temple of terror, gore, action and intrigue during the festival. You won’t see European arthouse movies or Oscar contenders here. In the tradition of grindhouse theatres and cult movie nights, Midnight Madness is all about pure, unadulterated film fun, viewed late at night with over 1,000 like-minded cinema lovers.
    Genre movies have long enjoyed a prime spot at TIFF thanks to Midnight Madness, something not offered by other festivals like Cannes and Venice.
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  • The Toronto International Film Festival is just around the corner and if you were lucky enough to score an invite to one of the many fabulous parties, you'll need something amazing to wear. But before you max out the credit card, consider these few simple tips for getting red carpet ready on a budget.

     Get the look for less    There are many ways to score designer looks for less. Not only is it sale season, but year 'round you can shop at consignment and vintage shops for gently used labels at a fraction of the price. Another great spot to hunt for loot is stores like Winners, which allow you to shop the runway and enjoy major discounts.

    Also see: How to amp up your red carpet beauty look for less
    Dress vs. accessories

    When it comes to red carpet ready looks, it's best to go one of two ways: an over-the-top dress with simple accessories or statement-making accessories with a basic dress. This way you'll be pouring funds in one direction or the other, not going overboard with a head-to-toe
    Read More »
  • Tim P. Whitby/Getty Images
    In the first part of this ongoing series, we take a look at actors who are likely to break out at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival.
    First on our list is Spanish-born German actor Daniel Brühl. While it may seem strange to consider a 35-year-old with nearly 60 credits to his name an up-and-comer, Brühl is still largely unknown outside of Europe. However, with two very high-profile films set to play at TIFF this year, Brühl's fortunes are likely to change when the fest kicks off.
    What do you know him from?
    Melanie Laurent and Daniel Brühl in Quentin Tarantino's Brühl is probably best known to North American audiences for his role as German sniper and war hero Fredrick Zoller in Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds.”
    Read More »
  • The Toronto International Film Festival is Hollywood’s time to shine in the Great White North. For 10 celebrity-filled days, downtown Toronto will be draped in red carpet and bombarded by flash bulbs as Hollywood A-listers and top-tier directors unveil their latest prestige projects.
    Even though many of Hollywood’s TIFF offerings will be released in the weeks and months following the festival (making a pricy admission a hard sell), getting to see these potential Oscar contenders first (with the cast and crew in attendance, no less) still make these movies a huge draw at the festival.
    Here are six big Hollywood flicks that are sure to have people talking at TIFF 2013.
    “Gravity”

    While things don’t get much more “Hollywood” than an $80 million techno-thriller starring George Clooney and Sandra Bullock, TIFF flick “Gravity” also happens to be the first film from acclaimed Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón since 2006's "Children of Men." Star power and serious filmmaking cred! The film follows
    Read More »
  • If you're heading out to a red carpet premiere during the Toronto International Film Festival, it's easy to glam up your beauty look without breaking the bank. As M.A.C senior artist Melissa Gibson explains, the easiest way to achieve drama on a budget is through bold lipstick.

    Go glam with a bold lip and defined brows, like Lily Collins. (Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic)Go burgundy!
    Rather than going the obviously route with bright red or pink, try diving into one of the season's deep burgundy pouts. Melissa used M.A.C Retro Matte Lipstick in Pre-Raphaelite. This matte colour has great staying power, but for an even longer lasting finish, try prepping the lip with a primer (Melissa used M.A.C Prep + Prime Lip) to smooth the surface, then discourage the pigment from shifting and even out the base by using a lip pencil. Melissa chose M.A.C Cherry Lip Pencil for a boost of bright colour underneath. Then, rather than simply lining the lips, she filled them in completely, giving the lipstick something to grip. This will also serve as back up colour as the evening progresses. Finish by
    Read More »
  • When you think of the Toronto International Film Festival, Hollywood Oscar contenders and international arthouse films are usually what come to mind. And with good cause: Those are the movies that tend to get the bulk of the spotlight at TIFF every year.
    But the annual festival is also showcase for the best actors, filmmakers, and films that Canada has to offer. With new work from established Canuck filmmakers and rising stars alike, TIFF 2013 is a particularly good year for Canadian movies. If you’re looking for something homegrown to see at the festival, here are five Canadian films to watch for at TIFF 2013.

    “The F Word”


    Daniel Radcliffe and Zoe Kazan in "The F Word."



    One of three TIFF films starring former “Harry Potter” Daniel Radcliffe, “The F Word” is the latest from “Goon” director Michael Dowse. A romantic comedy about being in the “friend zone,” the movie follows Wallace (Radcliffe), a lovelorn med-school dropout who falls for Chantry (Zoe Kazan), a girl with whom he feels an instant connection but who just
    Read More »
  • Director Denis Villeneueve. (Angela Weiss/Getty Images)
    It's extremely rare for any filmmaker to have two movies at the Toronto International Film Festival in one year. In fact, it’s not very often that a director even has two films out in the same year. However, Quebec’s Denis Villeneuve (“Incendies”) is apparently the exception to those rules. His latest films “Prisoners” and “Enemy” are both set to play during the opening weekend of TIFF 2013.
    After Villeneuve’s “Incendies” earned an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film in 2011, the director was quickly tapped by Warner Bros. to helm “Prisoners” – a long-in-development crime thriller about the father of missing young girl who kidnaps the person he suspects is behind his daughter’s disappearance. Based on Aaron Guzikowski’s Black List screenplay, “Prisoners” stars Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Terrence Howard, Maria Bello, Paul Dano, Melissa Leo, and Viola Davis.
    Under normal circumstances, “Prisoners” might have a little bit of Oscar talk based on its tremendous cast and disturbing subject matter alone, but when you throw in the promising script and a talented filmmaker like Villeneuve, you get a movie that
    Read More »
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